Comrades! The question of concessions has provoked among us disagreements that are quite unexpected, because in principle it seemed, as far back as last autumn, that this question had been resolved beyond dispute, and when the Sovnarkom decree on concessions was issued on November 23rd of last year, there were no protests in Party circles—at least among responsible workers—and no disagreements were apparent. You are of course aware that at the Party Congress it became necessary to pass a special resolution confirming the decree on concessions and specifically extending it to the granting of concessions in Baku and Grozny.

I do not presume now to judge to what extent such arguments contained general principle or, so to speak, Baku "patriotism"—Baku localism. I must say for myself that I combated this view in the most decisive manner, considering that if we cannot carry out a policy of concessions and attract foreign capital to concessions, then there is no point in speaking of serious practical measures for improving the economic situation. One cannot seriously pose the question of immediate improvement of the economic situation if one does not apply a policy of concessions, if one does not renounce prejudices, local patriotism, in part guild patriotism, in part the notion that we ourselves, so to speak, will "investigate." It is necessary to be prepared to go to any length of sacrifices, deprivations, and inconveniences, to break with habits, perhaps even with diseases, so long as we produce a serious shift and improvement in the economic situation in the main branches of industry. This must be achieved at all costs.

At the Party Congress all attention was drawn to the question of policy toward the peasantry and the question of the food tax, which occupies first place in legislation generally and has occupied Party attention as the central political question. On the question of the food tax and relations with the peasantry, we have come to understand that we are not in a position to raise the productivity of large-scale industry as quickly as would be necessary to satisfy the needs of the peasants without resorting to such crutches as the revival of free trade, free industry. And now we must, with the aid of even these crutches, climb upward, for it is obvious to anyone not mad that without these crutches we cannot keep pace with the demands of life, because the situation continues to sharpen—owing, among other things, to the fact that the timber flotation of this spring has been disrupted in the vast majority of places for a whole series of reasons, primarily natural ones. A fuel crisis is approaching. Then spring threatens a new crop failure, again owing to climatic conditions,